Category: New Business Development

A mentor once told me,
“Great leaders are boringly predictable.”

The Chief Medical Officer
of the city I live in
is a great leader.

She has been consistent
and predictable
when it comes to the pandemic.

At this stage
of the pandemic,
residents know
when infection numbers
reach or lower
to certain points,
certain actions will be taken.
They can plan for it,
depend on it.

And that’s reassuring
in the midst
of an otherwise scary event.

The Chief Medical Officer
is also
very skilled at
signaling.

She will issue statements
that convey
the actions
she will likely take next.

Yesterday, she told businesses
they should encourage
their employees to work from home.
That tells me
we’ll going into
a more restrictive lockdown
soon.

That signaling is reassuring also.
We can plan.
We can adjust.
We know what to expect.

We aren’t wasting time
or other precious resources,
during a time
when these are all short,
guessing what the city’s response
will be.

We can be as productive
as we can be
during a time
like this.

Are you boringly predicable?

Change is scary for many people
and one way that some people
‘fight’ change
is by forcing newer generations
to learn things
THEY learned
but are no longer relevant.

An example of this
is forcing cursive to be taught
in schools.

I’m in my late forties
and I used cursive
approximately 15 times in 2019.
EVERY instance
was to sign my name
on a check.

I do hand ‘write’ weekly letters
to loved ones
but those are printed by hand.
Cursive is difficult
for many of my elderly loved ones to read.

We no longer need cursive
to communicate.
It DID serve its purpose
but we, as a society,
have moved on.

When I was in primary school,
the debate was whether or not
we should learn shorthand.
I have NEVER had the need
to read or write shorthand.
NEVER.

Requiring people
to learn obsolete skills
won’t stop change.

It WILL, however,
make it more difficult
for people
to deal with that change.

My Romance Writer brand
receives death threats
at least once a week.

When I had my email
attached to this blog,
I received death threats daily.

When I posted
on financial forums,
I received so many death threats;
I had filters on my email system
placing those messages
automatically into a folder.

If you’re female
and you’re fortunate
to become successful,
you WILL be hated.

Why?

Financial control
is the easiest way
to ensure someone does
exactly
what you want them
to do.

Once someone
becomes powerful,
they can’t be
as easily controlled financially.

That bothers abusers
and manipulators.

It especially bothers people
who see other groups
as being theirs to manipulate.

You will anger
these abusive people
when you become successful.

You will lose them
as so-called friends.
They’ll likely claim
you’ve become
‘too big for your boots’
or ‘a stuck up b*tch.’
They’ll say
you’ve ‘changed.’

And you HAVE changed.
You’re stronger
and they can no longer
manipulate you.

Focus on the people
who are happy for you,
the people who cheer for you
and for other powerful women.

And be wary
of people who have a history
of hating successful women.
They are unlikely
to cheer for you.

A buddy was telling me
how relieved she was
that the US would be
respected and trust
once more
by other countries.

Ummm…
respect and trust
is not an instant thing.
The US has betrayed
almost all of their allies
over the past 4 years.
Hell, the US
stole PPE from Canada,
their neighbor.

It will take years,
maybe decades,
to rebuild that trust
and even then,
the relationships will never
be the same.

That holds true
in business also.

Relationships with partners,
vendors, employees,
customers
once damaged
MIGHT be rebuilt
but they will never be
the same.

Trust once gone
is gone forever.

Think carefully
before you destroy trust.

Whole Foods,
a fairly new entrant
to Canada,
has hit the news
in a big, BAD way
for banning their employees
from wearing poppies.

Canadians wear poppies
in November to honor
veterans.
It is one of
those Canadian traditions
you don’t mess with.

By messing with it,
Whole Foods
has brought attention
to the fact
they’re American
in a time when
Canadians aren’t huge supporters
of Americans
(Almost all of Canada’s
early COVID cases
came from the US).

It has also shown Canadians
that Whole Foods
has no interest in
adhering to Canadian traditions.

And, because they are new
to Canada,
this perception will likely stick
forever.
They will ALWAYS be associated
with not caring about veterans.

Every country,
every region,
every neighborhood
has their own traditions
businesses shouldn’t mess with.

Learn about these traditions.
Honor them.
Don’t mess with them.

During the dot com boom,
I designed business plans
for many (too many) businesses
that were focused on eyeballs,
not profitability.

Their plans were to sell
their businesses
to venture capitalists
or established businesses
and allow THEM
to figure out profitability.

Some of these profit-less businesses
WERE acquired
but most of them went belly up
during the dot com bust.

Today, I see a similar phenomenon
in the book business.
Many Indie writers
are focused on readers,
on getting to the top
of the bookseller charts
and they are paying huge amounts
of marketing
to get there.

Most of these writers
barely break even.
Some lose money
every month.

They feel
if they obtain enough readers,
profitabiliy
will magically happen.

And for a few of them,
that MIGHT
miraculously happen.
But you and I both know
what will happen
to most of them.

I suspect this is happening
in other industries also.

Unit sales or eyeballs or readers
aren’t the same
as profit.

Decide what your ultimate goal is
and design your tactics
around that.

It might mean
giving up
that top of the charts position
for profitability.

The first month
of my Romance Writing business,
ALL my decisions
were difficult decisions.
I was making them all
for the first time.

Do I promote
other writers’ books
in my newsletter?
Do I sign up
for newsletter builders?
How often do I send
my newsletter?
etc.

All of these decisions
had to be made.

The next month,
it was MUCH easier.
I knew the answers
to all these questions
and, since nothing
in my business had
severely shifted,
my answers remained
the same.

The industry changes
but not significantly every month.
My business
is fairly stable.
I don’t have to
reexamine these decisions
every month
and that makes business building
MUCH easier.

If you DO have to reexamine
similar decisions every month,
that’s a signal
that something
-the industry, the business
or perhaps you
– isn’t stable.

Seth Godin
shares

“Hard decisions
that happen often
are probably a sign
that the system
you’re relying on
isn’t stable,
which means that
the thing you did last time
might not be
the thing you want
to do this time.”

If that’s the case,
consider changing
your situation
until it IS more stable.

Or resign yourself
to revisiting decisions often.

Most writers
write their first books
‘in their spare time.’

Most business builders
build their first businesses
‘in their spare time.’

But-but-but,
you say,
you don’t have
‘spare time.’

You do have spare time.
I can guarantee it.

I wrote a
10,000 word short story
a month
while working
a 70 hour plus
a week job.

How did I do this?

I wrote while I waited.
I wrote while
I was standing in line
at the grocery store.
I wrote while
waiting for meetings
to start.
I wrote while
waiting for
the pasta water
to boil.
I wrote while
on the toilet,
while on the bus,
while on hold
with the banks.

It all added up
to a short story worth
of polished writing
a month.

Seth Godin
shares

“Ordering in
instead of
cooking.

Working from home
instead of
commuting.

Using a dishwasher
instead of
the sink…

All that time saved.
Now that
you’ve got the time back,
you get to choose
what’s truly important to you.

How will you spend it?

[Time spent on
TV and social media
has gone up
every year of my lifetime].”

You have the spare time.

Build your d@mn business.

One of my buddies
often tells me
she wants to write a novel
but she doesn’t
have the time
to do that.

She is a fangirl
of dozens of TV Shows.
She HAS the time.
She merely doesn’t wish
to allocate
any of that time
to writing a novel.

Seth Godin
shares

“When you bought
your first smartphone,
did you know
you would spend
more than 1,000 hours
a year
looking at it?

Months later,
can you remember
how you spent those hours?

When you upgraded
to a new smartphone,
so you could spend
more hours on it,
did you think about
how you had spent
so much of your ‘free’ time
the year before?

If we wasted money
the way we waste time,
we’d all be bankrupt.”

Time is even more finite
than money.
I can ‘create’ more money.
I can’t create more hours
in a day.

Before starting a new business
or project,
look at the time component
required to make it a success.

Figure out
where you’ll get that time,
what you’re willing
to give up
to complete the many tasks
associated with
building your business.

Time is an important resource.
Ensure your business/project
has enough of it.

Many people,
when they discuss
how devastating COVID-19 is,
will point
to the number of dead.

Well over 222,000 Americans
have died from COVID-19.
That’s horrible.

But the number I look at
is the number of infected.

Well over 8 MILLION Americans
have been infected with COVID-19.

Why do I look at
the number of infected?

Because countries didn’t close down
based on the number of people
who will die.

Dying is a devastatingly tragic outcome
but the odds of dying from COVID-19
are, fortunately, fairly low.
Dying also doesn’t require
a lot of resources
from countries.

Spending a lifetime
‘recovered’
(i.e. no longer testing positive)
yet ill,
unable to work,
needing medical attention,
however,
is extremely expensive.

And the odds of that
with COVID-19
is appallingly high.

I suspect
you’re currently focusing on
a wrong number,
a wrong perimeter
for success
also.

I, for example,
when building my social media presence,
was focused on the number of followers.

I wasn’t focusing on the true barometers of success
-the number of people I converted
to newsletter subscribers
and
the number of people
who bought my books.

And that cost me money
and time.

Evaluate the numbers
you track.
Does focusing on them
bring you closer
to your definition of success?